


Small Miracles

by Alina_writes



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Anxiety, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Comfort/Angst, Depression, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, goddess as a psychiatrist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:25:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6147631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alina_writes/pseuds/Alina_writes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Ma had been in her prime, she could just wipe away the dark thoughts and let the light fill the girl’s head, and Gwen would go back to her family tonight, happy as a lark, but it has been more than a century since Ma felt remotely close to her prime. She’ll have to settle for the second best thing she can do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Miracles

    “So, tell me, what seems to be the problem, Ms…” She pretends to squint at the name on the screen of her laptop, while gently prodding the young woman’s mind. “Gwendolyn Fong? Would you rather I refer to your first name or your last?” Her experimental prodding slides off like droplets on a water lily. The girl has her mind guarded like a fortress.

    “Just Gwen would be fine.” The girl looks about in her late teen, a little bit soft on the edges. The huge backpack she carries indicates a freshman. The way she sits curled into herself and on the edge on the sofa indicates that she really, really doesn’t want to be here. “And, no, there’s no problem. It’s just a, um, false alarm. There’s really nothing to worry about, Dr. Ma.”

    “Is that so?” She glances at the record onscreen, mouth turning downwards at the words. “At the beginning of the semester, you were asked to complete a survey on your mental health. The results do not look like ‘nothing to worry about’, Gwen.” The girl looks down at her hands. Ma feels a flash of panic slicing through the air, cold and razor-sharp. “Your results indicated a high level of anxiety and depression. Is there anything you need to talk about? This is what the University’s councilors are for, you know.”

   “Well,” Gwen wrings her hands, before she realizes what she’s doing and puts her hands back in her lap. She manages a smile, which looks less convincing than the plastic potted plants on Ma’s coffee table. “I had just found out that I was accepted into TU at that time. I might have been a little bit workred up and exaggerated when I answered the questions.”

    “You exaggerated your anxiety and depression because you were overjoyed for being enrolled?” Ma raises one trimmed, immaculate eyebrow, feeling the distrust and defense leaking from the girl like smoke seeping out of a smoking area. “It’s alright to ask for help, Gwen. Your grades won’t suffer if you come to us for consulting. It’s going to do you more harm to hold it in than letting people know that you’re hurting.”

     _Like you actually fucking care._ The thought zips through the air, so venomous and bitter that Ma feels the awful taste of it on her tongue. Before her, sitting on the sofa with her hands folded in her lap, Gwendolyn Fong wears a small, sad smile that shows her dimples and makes her look so young and soft.

    _I want to go home._ The thought is more hesitant, less loud, but it drops like a gavel.

    It’s down to tacks of brass, then.

    “You still think there’s nothing to talk about?” She asks, once again feeling her mental tendrils bouncing off the girl’s mind.

    Gwen nods. She is fiddling the straps on her backpack.

    “Alright, then. You can go now.” As the girl gets up to leave, relief coming out of her in waves, Ma reaches up and finds the girl’s gleaming thread of consciousness, and _short-circuits_ it.

    Gwen sits down again, blank-faced. Her eyes look ahead, no focused on anything in particular.

    Ma positions herself next to the girl on the sofa. This is something she will need to sit down to deal with.

    “Sorry about this,” she says to Gwen’s unresponsive face. “But sometime you just need to deal with this kind of emotional crisis hands on…” She places her hands on either side of the girl’s head, and extends the tendrils of her mind.

    Without the interference of Gwen’s consciousness, she reaches the center of the girl’s emotions with little trouble. She wraps her mind around the pulsing globe-shaped thing, pulling it out of the girl’s head and into her hands.

    Of course, some of her sisters do it in their patients’ head, like in the movies, the pink or lavender tendrils of their minds battling depression, anxiety, and bipolar right in the darkness of human brains, but Ma always insisted on operating where she can actually _see_ what she’s doing, thank you very much.

    Gazing at the glowing thing in her hands, her heart falls. This one has been brewing for more or less than six years, but the amount of anxiety and depression in it makes it look far worse than it should be.

    The thing she’s pulled out of Gwen’s head is a writhing mess of self-hatred, pressure, and god-knows-what all tangled up, held together by a net made of tiredness and a generous helping of Emptiness. The net is sturdy, the holes almost nonexistent, but every once in a while a tentacle made of dark thoughts pokes out, and it _screams_ (im not good enough not worth it no one will ever love me whats the point). The net bears marks of various breaches.

    Triggers, Ma thinks to herself, grimly. Where is the good stuff? There has to be good stuff in this cluster fuck somewhere.

    She sends a tendril of her mind (the color of summer sky in four o’clock) into the fray, watching the dark things resist, recoil, and retreat, clearing a path to the center.

    The silver-white light is pitifully tiny, being pressed in the dark for so long, but with the negatives held back by Ma’s mind, it starts to expand, throwing its light around like it was laughing in its own way.

    If Ma had been in her prime, she could just wipe away the dark thoughts and let the light fill the girl’s head, and Gwen would go back to her family tonight, happy as a lark, but it has been more than a century since Ma felt remotely close to her prime. She’ll have to settle for the second best thing she can do.

    Ma greets the silver-whiting thing with her mind, smelling the sweet marshmallow scent of Gwen’s treasured memories. She goes through all of them, trying to find the right one, the one that would last…Aha.

    Human minds are stupid things. They tend to lean towards the negative. They are also prone to be deceived, however, and that’s what Ma and her six sisters count on.

    With her clever, experienced fingers, she takes a strand of the silver-white light and weaves it into a dream, one where Gwen meets her favourite author. The author smiles at Gwen, in the dream, and tells her that she’s read Gwen’s works, and that she enjoys them. “You have talent,” she tells Gwen, in the dream. “Don’t give up.”

    When she’s done, Ma takes the dream and adds it into the web. The Emptiness shivers and wavers, before swallowing up the dream, giving off a gentle, pearl-ish glow. The negatives have flooded back, trapping the light again, but when they try to crowd against the net, they hesitate, a few tentacles disintegrating upon coming in contact with the net.

    Satisfied, Ma waves her hands, and the net and the things inside it fade away.

    Gwen stands up, blinking owlishly, still recovering from being short-circuited. Ma settles herself back in her office chair. “Go out there, have a hot cocoa, and go home.” She says to the girl as she makes her way toward the door. “And close the door on your way out, please."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ma is a facet of the Chinese goddess Seventh Mother (七娘媽), kinda like the Chinese equivalent of a fairy godmother, who watches over children and women. I haven't seen much of her these days, but I choose to believe she's still out there, looking after her children in her own way.  
>  This was written when a particularly evil wave of depression struck, and I needed to get some awful things out of my system.


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